John Fleming (R-LA): This was paid for by you say the evil oil money…what was your point in saying it was paid for by the oil industry? I’m looking around here on the dais and I can’t find any of your data. Where is your data, sir?

Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters: It’s at the Department of Labor, the EIA [Energy Information Administration], the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey], it’s all from government studies.

The refuge, with its large herds of calving caribou and a range of other natural riches, is a particular target of Republican legislators hoping to tap it for $1.4 billion in deficit-reducing oil-lease revenues.

A review of the facts is necessary when debating drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

With no significant job or revenue growth, what does Arctic Refuge drilling do for America? It destroys a place that millions of us have fought to protect for the past 50 years while filling the pockets of those fantastically wealthy oil companies. Luckily, there is an alternative. House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Ed Markey (D-MA) called for cutting the $43 billion in taxpayer handouts to oil companies over the next 10 years, ending royalty-free drilling on public lands offshore in the Gulf of Mexico for another $9.5 billion over the next 10 years, and repealing the royalty giveaway to Gulf states for another $1.9 billion. As he said:

All told, over the next 10 years these Democratic ideas would reduce our deficit 20 times as much as opening up the Arctic Refuge to drilling. To put it in perspective, if these Democratic ideas were the height of the Empire State Building, the Republican plan to drill in the Refuge would occupy only the first five floors.